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Sg I I UKIUUJ, LUUrCK ft cv., 05
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Refiners. Tea and Fish Importers. Ex-
WHOLESALE ' ' '"
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f\_ I^^^Jl^ \T^^-i^^*/-% Jf You Want the* Best, Buy the Horn©
Dry uoods and Motions I -~-a«— i
9/ Hill
st. Paul, . n.NN. .1 j 242-262 Third St., St. Paul, Minn. I
like life for so many centuries that its pop
ulation had lost all knowledge of its origin,
except the traditionary recitals, handed down
- from tribe to tribe and from father to son,
incidentally conformable to mythic or rellg
ious beliefs, inherited from an ancestry un
l ' known in the history of enlightened civiliza
tlon. According to the "Map of Linguistic
Stocks," the Basin of the Missouri had been
principally occupied by the Siouan, Algon
quiari, Caddoan, Kiowan and Shoshonean lin
guistic divisions of the Indian tribes, when
the fortunes of war and the vicissitudes of
< r wealth precipitated an intromission of for
l cian occupancy as persistent as has been the
disappearance of these children of nature,
until occasional reservations with a dimin
ishing people are all that remain to indicate
where the light of the fire of the Indian
went out. Ills lodge poles are missing, his
game is all gone and his squaws are half
v.bite, licentiously tainted with the blood of
a more formidable race. The history of the
past 400 years practically covers the period
of about all that can be said of the Indians
of America; their discovery, the exciting
scenes of a warlike dispossession, and their
downfall, absorption and final disappearance.
Incidentally there is another question of
historic moment: tribal names and designa
tions.
Every word spoken in the original tongue
of the Indian has its direct meaning. Modern
\%§b mm* wp/
-■*•-a^SS^- *"""" yyyyyy^.-AA
LLLX-L-JB HACICETT CtJIiVEK,
Rntanlst and Exnlorer at Source of Missouri.
LILLIAN IIACKETT CtJLVEK,
Botanist and Explorer at Source of Missouri.
i ■ ethnologic writers seem determined to sys
tematically modify and change about all the
names found in tribal nomenclature to such
an extent that the not distant future will
witness an established interruption in pro
•""! nunciation and orthography that seems to
foreshadow tho obliteration and abandon
ment of all the old original names of the dif
ferent stocks and tribes.
Tho great Dakota nation and related tribes
occupied nearly the entire Missouri basin.
Each band was named according to the char
acter or location where they resided, as de
scribed by Riggs in his "Dakota Language,"
1851, from Mille Lacs in Minnesota to the
-£ Black Hills and the upper Missouri.
On the other hand, the designations now in
use. to a very great extent, were unknown
)aad unheard of among the Indians, until the
modifications were adopted by the whites and
extended to them in written descriptions. ■
Tho modifications aro very numerous. A
few are noted:
Naudowessioux (Si-.ux), Nation of tbe BoeS
(Buffalo.)
O/aukiuk, Ozaukles, Ssv.ks, Sac (Sprout
ing.)
Oumlssourites, Missourltes, Missouria,
Mhsenrl.
Ankhinaubag, Gjibway, Chipp-iwa, Chip
pewa/ (Spontaneous.)
\ The word "Indian," fo universally adopted,
was never heard of or spoken until after the
i ■ landing of Columbus, when It was supposed
* he had reached India, ar.d the natives were
ihenee known as Indians; now, I", vulgar
THE SAINT PAUL DAILY GLOBE: SUNDAY MORNING, MAY 10, 1896.
parlance, called "Injun," even by many of
the natives themselves. This question is too
broad and far-reaching to permit of an at
tempt to fathom its causes and scope at this
time.
Other considerations, such as origin, an
cestral relations, cannibalism, slavery, flesh
eaters, root-diggers, fish-netters, lodge and
troglodytic life, religious traditions and in
stincts, mortuary rites and practices, mar
riage customs, polygamy, migrations, origin
and secrets of clans, climatic influences, and
those various and numerous conditions of
Indian existence, life, warfare, habits, cus
toms, and languages, might be referred to,
were it not for want of space and opportunity
at this time.
The Missourias Indians, said to be of the
same linguistic stock—Siouan—and after
whom tho name Missouri has come down to
us, are now practically an extinct tribe or
band, having been consolidated with the
Otoes, now at Ponca, Oklahoma. The name
of these Indians will be referred to for in
formation concerning the true meaning and
origination of the tribal designation conferred
upon them.
It is evident, and more than probable, that
they are the descendants of that ancestry
who located somewhere upon the Missouri
river prior to the advent of the French, and,
increasing in numbers, developed into the
numerous bands known to exist, some of
which passed up the river and some down
toward lt9 mouth. In that way tho habitat
of the Missourir.3 became fixed near the junc
tion of tho Missouri with the Mississippi;
hence they were known as people "Living on
tho Mouth of the Waters.''
Their reduced numbers, from a powerful
and savage tribe, came from warfare, and
the destructive influences of smallpox, which
depleted their ranks until they were no long
er able to withstand the onslaughts of their
enemies, and claiming tho protection of the
Otoes, consolidation and extinction as a sepa
rate tribe followed.
Liko all other North American Indians,
they knew nothing concerning their origin,
save only those traditionary lines of uncer- !
tainty, which their successors in tho Western
country havo born unable to fathom.
As bloodthirsty savages, they figure in con
temporaneous history, treacherous and cun-.
ning in modes of action to an extent equaling
the later tribes of the same stock, who have
plundered, murdered, and mutilated the fron
tier settlors. ami ravished their wives and
daughters, until retaliation followed with the
rami vengeance; and rifle-pits and trenches
for defense arc scattered on the plain* nearly
the entire ienc'.h of the Missouri and many j
of it.« branches, now relics, of past decades; '
tor the Indian, becoming subdued, likewise j
became submissive, and the graves of the
dead mark the progress of the change.
The name Missouri has come down to the
present generation lv a modified tens, and. '
with a misinterpretation of its real and true
original meaning, as named after a tribe of
the Slouan stock residing upon Its banks
when first seen by Europeans. The prepara
tion of a detailed list of the different forms
of this name was arranged for, but owing to
an unforeseen disappointment only a partial
and curtained showing can now be made;
sufficient, however, to indicate the origin,
meaning, and use of the word as applied to
the Indians, the river, and a state of the Fed
eral Union.
The original meaning of the word Missouri
was "living on the mouth of the waters." So
stated by the Indians themselves.
SPANISH AND FRENCH DISCOVERIES.
Some references seem now desirable con
cerning the approach ef civilization toward
the Missouri.
Years before Soto, the "Hernand of the
Grove," had crossed the Mississippi, at
some unknown point below the site of the
city of Memphis, Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, the
treasurer of the unfortunate Narvaez ex
pedition, landing probably on the shores of
Texas, had wand.ered with his three com
panions northward to the plains and moun
tains of the West. After about nine years
of hardships and privations, alternating be
tween captivity and freedom, they hailed
with sentiments of delight, in April, 1536,
the Spanish settlements in Mexico. This is
referred to here not that they had gone as
far as the Missouri, but thatlhey had found
the tribes, the buffalo, the mountains, and
the plains to the northward uijder such re
markable circumstances as to lead to the
presumption that they were probably the
first Europeans to learn of the existence,
from tribal sources and by actual discoveries,
of the grand river system, supplying the
freshets that had formerly driven their boats
into the sea at the delta of the Mississippi,
when their shirks were the sails and the
lanyards the manes and tails of their horses,
of which system the Missouri is an import
ant part Wherever Soto may have marched
with his army from the 18th of June, 1541,
until the 17th of the following April, no
one has yet successfully fathomed the iden
tity of the actual localities traversed, ex
cept that the direction was northerly and
the position west of the Mississippi, which
they had called the Rio Grande. It is un
likly that an army would march to the
North, under such circumstances and in
search of gold, without learning from the
natives the character of the country be
jend, and yet no certainty exists concern
ing the actual localities penetrated. Had
they marched farther to the westward they
would have learned, from their own kindred,
of Coronado's northward march to the Seven
Cities of Cibola, and una.uestionably, to the
valley of the Missouri, in 1540-42. Coronado
marched with his mixed army from Culiacan
in April, 1540, reached the famed cities of
Cibola in the following July, overcoming
with force and arms every opposition of the
natives, and, searching for gold, penetrated
far to the northward, across mountains and
plains under the guidance of "The Turk,"
an Indian of that region, who represented,
faultlessly in description, but recklessly in
fact, for which he was strangled, the wealth
of the country and the cities beyond.
The Identity of the localities, owing to the
Spaniard's greed for gold and contempt for
geogmhy, cannot be certainly fathomed,
but the description they have left of the
rivers and nations, the mountains and plains,
leave no doubt whatever that they were, the
real discoverers of the Basin of the Missouri,
if not of the river Itself.
This question of discovery by Coronado's
marching horde, living upon the flesh and
milk of the buffalo, upon one of the most
remarkably bold ard daring rnarc>i?s re
corded in the annals of American history,
has been slow to penetrate to the Importance
It deserves, antedating as it does any known
exploration toward the interior as far as the
hydrographic system of the Missouri Basin.
The cause for this may be found in the con
flicts of authority, the diversity of languages
and the zones of temperature. The Spanish
were Catholic, exclusive, cruel to a fault,
and avaricious. Their state papers seldom
saw the light of day. In discoveries the
natives were made, not companions but
slaves; and while ah ambitious priest might
strive to plant the cross of Christ in the
Western World, the marches were by armies
and the subjection was by force; not yet
ended, while Cuban independence is sus
pended in the balance.
For these reasons, we have been loth to
either fcngw or acknowledge the greater Im
portance of the Spanish discoveries north of
New Mexico and west of the Mississippi until
rery recent times. The papal grant was fol
lowed by the royal grants, and the maps of
this republic, to the fortieth degree, continue
to indicate the result. The rest is history,
from the conquest of Mexico to Santa Fe and
the Federal Union, and from the Aztecs to
Cortes, Juan de Ornate, and the butchered
Spaniards of 1720.
Nothing better could be expected from the
cruelties, the greed for gain, the overbearing
insolence of the Spanish explorers, whose only
procedure seemed to be for gold and glory,
through the channel of the downfall of a less
powerful race of men; and that, too, when
millions of the precious metal remained at
their very feet, unmined, In the mountains
they traversed, and which, since, has become
the wpalth of a more powerful nation.
Spaniards lived in a different atmosphere,
and the man of the North succeeded the man
of tho South In the sequence of time and
events. One tortured and robbed the natives,
the other rounded him up on reservations.
We can now notice concisely the advance of
the French west of the Mississippi.
The voyage of M. Nicollet, in 1639, to within
a short distance of the Mississippi, paved the
way for tho march of discovery by Radlsson
and Groseilliers, about twenty years later, to
and across the great river. In Northern Min
nesota, where they heard of the Missouri from
the lips of the Sioux Indians, which Radisson
called the "Forked river." .loliet and Mar
quette, with their voyageurs and canoes, the
17th of June, 1673, floated out from the mouth
of the Wisconsin to the "broad bosom of the
Great River of the West." They found an
other name, that of Baude, for the Mississippi,
and upon reaching the mouth of the Missouri,
July 1, 1673, they heard of that river as the
Pekittanßi, and upon Marquette's map is in
dicated, above its mouth, a tribe of Indians
which he called SemessSrit, as before stated.
From these two words, which have been fully
explained, the first an Ozaukiuk (Sac) name
and the last an Oumessourit name, has been
derived—Missouri: "Living on the Mouth of
the Waters River." •
The results of the explorations of Joliet and
Marquette, with their five voyageurs, who
turned back after descending the Mississippi
to the mouth of the Arkansas, or near there,
need not here be further referred to. They
were prompted not to proceed on account of
the Spanish occupancy and other obstacles be
yond; for, should they not return, all the
fiuits of their labor would be lost to the
world. Not so the intrepid Sieur de la Salle,
who, a few years later, passed down the Mis
sissippi and took possession of the country in
the name of the king of France. To him Is
accorded the honor of establishing Fort St.
Louis on the Illinois, and on his arrival at
the mouth of the Mississippi, in ICB2, named
the country Louisiana, that vast territory
reaching from the mouth of the Mississippi
to the Lake of the Woods and the Pacific
ccast. The vicissitudes of European warfare
changed its possession from France to Spain,
and from Spain to France, and, in 1803, to
the United States, for Bonaparte was afraid to
retain it in the event of certain war with
England. St. Louis and New Orleans had been
founded and the Spanish and French had al
ternated in possession according to the vicis
situdes of maritime expeditions and inter
national treaties.
In the meantime penetration westward from
the Mississippi had actively commenced, and
the fur trade -of the French had taken the
place of the greed for gold on the part of the
Spanish. Western migration became the or
der of the day for traffic with the tribes of the
[/^Ss^Pf
WHITE HORSE,
Chief of the Missouri Indians.
plains. The voyage of Hennepin and Accault
to St. Anthony, and La Houtan's River
Longue bear but Httle or no significance as
regards the Missouri, although La Houtan's
fanciful fiction might seem to refer to that
stream, unless comprehensively -understood.
NATIONAL TERRITORIAL CHANGES.
A brief consideration seems now appropri
ate concerning the general advance of civil
ized life from the East toward the West,
across tho Mississippi. The treaty of Utrecht
had enlarged, in 1713, the British possessions
In America.
At Fontainebleau, Nov. 3. 1762, the sixth ar
ticle of the Preliminary Treaty of Peace en
tered into by England, Spain and France,
irrevocably fixed the middle of the channel
of the Mississippi as an international bound
ary between the possessions of England and
France, in America; Spain abandoning to
England all claims east of that river, which
meant her Florldan possessions, which were
afterwards again relinquished. On the same
day, by a secret donation and a "later accept
ance, Louisiana, west of_ the' Mississippi,
passed from France to the Spanish crown,
and practically the whole.of the basin of the
Missouri, with an undetermined and indefi
nitely described limit, became. Spanish ter
ritory.
The Revolutionary war, which brought into
existence the Federal republic as the United
States of North America, ]cameriext.
It was a prophetic destiny, foreshadowed by
the effect following the cause, .for the peace
of the East had been almost constantly dis
turbed by avaricious influences emerging
from opportunities more or less directly con
nected with colonial possessions In America,
and England had few sympathizers in the
loss of the brightest gem in the, crown of her
realm, and a Washington and the Fourth of
July decorate the pages of an irrevocable his
tory. As seeretrly as Louisiana Has been ceded
to Spain in 1762, the treaty of San Udefonso, in
1800, retroceded the same to France, and Na
poleon Bonaparte ordered its sale and cession
to the United States, -which was consummated
April 30. 1803. anri ihrn followed an end to
the district terr: * -'-' inssessinns as di
vided by the cha-- " Mississippi, and the
broad plains and valleys, mountains and
streams of the Missouri basin became a ter
ritorial possession of the United States, only
slightly infringed by a British dominion in
the remote Northwest.
The following brief monetary statement of
that transaction (all honor to Jefferson and
his advisers!) may be summarized here:
Louisiana, area, in 1803, acres 766,733,440
(Reduced from Wheeler's square
mile estimate.)
Stipulated price $1.",000,000
Price per acre, a fraction less
than 2 cents.
Prj^p per section, of 640 acres ea'-h $12.52
Value at the government price,
$1.25 per acre $958,416,800
In capabilities of natural sustenance, a pop
ulation of 200,000,000, from the Mississippi
to the Pacific coast, can be maintained.
When this remarkable domain, augmented
afterward in the southwest, came into the
possession of the Federal Union, that grand
array of fur companies, too numerous to
mention and too complicated to describe in
this unpretentious address, sustained in traf
fic a horde of traders, trappers, hunters and
voyageurs, limited only by the extent of the
frontier. Their customers were the Indians
and their trade was in pelts, while their ap
proaches were the rivers and their highways
the plains. Stockaded posts dotted the line
from Saskatchewan to the Gulf, from St.
Louis to the mountains, and from Superior 10
the Missouri, and the Mississippi assumed
the Importance foreshadowed by the impetu
ous boldness of its original discoverers, not
now as of the Spaniards nor the French, but
by that American nation of men, whom to
the English were a star in the West and to
the Red Indian a shadow ia the East.
There are reasons for this. The inherent
ambition for an advance by man, from what
r ever motives and in numerous ways—na
tional, religious, economic, political, personal
—and from those various causations particu
larly Influencing the separate characteristics
of diversified life.
The Indian and his bison, the beaver and
bear gave way, and the aptitude of events in
spired the memorable words:
"Westward the march of empires takes its
I way."
I LEWIS AND CLARKE—WESTERN STATE
HOOD.
The charming and enchantfng pen of Wash
ington Irving, in volumes of history, on state
ments of fact, has given to the world a per
: nianent record of the wildest life and the
. most stirring scenes lived and enacted on
; the "Bison Plains," with "The Hunter Na
i tions," on the branches of the Missouri, the
j river Itself and the country beyond. The
mountains and buttes, rivers and canons,
caves and plains, peaks and gulches, the
whele broad bosom of the Western wilds, for
more than seventy years after Lewis and
Clarke resounded with the results of the
war-whoop of the savage, his dances and
scalps; the trader's revenge; the trapper's
wild life; the explorer's courage; the miner's
ecler; the sportsman's luck; the marches of
the armies, and the battles of the West; the
graves of the dead, and the lives of the liv
ing; studies of the scientists; surveys of tho
government; ministers' missions; the Inroads
of slavery; political plots; Mormonlsm; stage
lines ajid robberies; hold-ups and horse
thieves; the waylaid emigrant, and the mur
derous onslaughts; the cannibal's hunger
and haste; organized robbery, and the vigi
lantes' ways; trials without law, and execu
tions with dispatch: stockades and forts for
defense; expeditions; the lives of the ranch
ers; cowboys; early steamboating; buffalo
hurts; the annihilation and disappearance of
game; miscegenation of the races; Industrial
life; the founding of towns and the build
ing of cities; Pacific railroads; that laby
rinth of fame and famous men, brave wives
and women, and the organized society which
has gradually evolved from that massive
domain west of the Mississippi twenty-three
states and territories, nearly half of which
are affected by the water ~he-l c* the Mis
souri, require the pen of an Irving for an
adequate description, and he would need a
vast conception to adequately depict the his
torical facts.
Hardly can I expect here to mention one
and ignore another, each being equal, In a
desire to preserve and record seme further
unknown facts concerning the Missouri; and
yet such names as Wilson Price Hunt and
Rr.msey Crooks; Manuel Lisa and Andrew
Henry; John Colter and James Brldger; Jean
N. Nicollet and George Catlin; Gen. Bonne
ville and William Subette; John Jacob A3tor
and Gen. Fremont; those magnificent gener
als of the army, the dead and the living, who
have battled with the savages; the soldiers of
the nation who silently occupy the graves of
tha dead, unmarked on the Western plains,
inscribed only in unwritten letters, "Died In
tho Cause, That Others May Live;" the wives
and mothers of those who never returned;
the victims of massacres and the unfortu
nates of ambush; the tortured prisoner, and
the escape by suicide; all must be left to
these magnificent societies and those mag
netic writers, whom to observe Is the record
Itself. The explorer, the miner, the emigrant,
the trapper and hunter, the trader, the army
and the Indian, the stage driver and high
wayman, the rancher and the traveler, the
scientist and scholar, historian and geogra
pher, capitalist and tramp, men, women and
children of all climes and colors and of all
nations and conditions, pleasure-seekers, ar
tisans, farmers and laborers, the devout and
the criminal, the chaste and the fallen have
contributed to the pages of that grand his
tory of the West, that will live long after
tho waters of the Missouri were reddened
with blood from its source to its mouth, and
frenx the days of Marquette to the date of
its states, when lawful order emerged from
the disturbances where chaos reigned.
THE UTMOST SOURCE OF THE MISSOURI
On the 28th day of July, 1895, and soon after
my return from the source ot the Mississippi,
Bemidjl, Cass and Leech lakes, In an exam
ination of the tumuli, relics and remains of
prehi3tcrlc man found at those points, I
departed oa another expedition in search of
the utmost source of the Missouri river.
The time occupied traveling westward from
St. Paul, Minn., to Helena, Mont., was very
pleasantly enjoyed on the Northern Paclfio
railroad, which traverses tha great wheat
.^lrftflßlPßtV^ Jobbers of
sSRJ wifti wis
UM|t , I^/wP Wt Foot <>i Ragle Street,
-A><SSSy^S«^'''^t Sole Northwestern Agents for
XmWm\ 1 IS! PLOW 1 fill
ST. PAUL PLOW CO.
way Harrows; Triumph
Withurii M iti/min; Hauili wH) J^^Sw^^.
Buckeye "S^fflra^^yQ
Pumps and Windmills '*""^£*3t<t -. S^r^jfl^to^Jui—^^^
thL*°J!ka?-fro my ou. Genuine PIRATE GANGS.
FAIRBANKS, MORSE & CO.
371-37.3 Sibley Street, ST. PAUL, MINN.
Fairbanks-^orse Gasoline Engine
Manufacturers and Jobbers of
Fairbanks Sta ijdard Sca)es 3
FAIRBANK9-MORSB Illgh-Srade Duplex Steam Pumps, FAIR
BANKS Galvanized Steel Wind Mills, Galvaui/.ed Steel Towers,
ECLIPSE Wind Mills. Irrigation Supplies, Iron and Wood Pumps,
Pipe, Fittings, Etc. Hallway Supplies and Railway Specialties.
Village. City aDd Railway Water-Works Plants aud Water Supply
Stations a Specialty.
lands of the Red River of the North near
Mcorhead and Fargo, in the dry basin of the
great Lake Agassiz, across which the fields
of golden grain could be seen in almost unlim
ited extent.
Passing westward out from the Red River
valley and into the James River valley of
North Dakota, tributary to the Missouri, the
surface of the country gradually changes.
It is In tho Dakota 3tates where the greatest
pressure of artesian flowago Is obtained; a re
markable system of deep wells have been lo
cated recently east of the Missouri.
With one day's time at my disposal, I drove
out from Bismarck to the Sibley rifle-pits on
Apple creek, where thirty-five years before I
had, with the Sibley command, met the
treacherous Sioux face to face, when the only
salutation was by carbines and cartridges,
tomahawks and scalping knives.
The rifle-pits remain intact, on a terrace
above the Missouri, and their appearance does
not seemingly indicate the lapse of so m?.r,y
years since they were constructed.
Proceeding on my way. I noticed after pass
ing through the Bad Lands, a village of prairie
dogs, west of Medora and east of Andrew's
station, where were a vast number of bur
rows, probably aa many as five thousand in
all, and seemingly a dog for every burrow.
The valley of the Yellowstone, with all Its
historic Interest, is not disappointing in tho
varied scenes It presents, and tho Crew In
dian can be found, nut murderous or thiev
ing as in former years, hut on a final res
ervation, through which the Northern Pa
cific winds its way to Billings, Livingston
and Bozeman, tha latter situated in the re-
Continued cm Kleveutu Page,
•
T. L BlOOd & GO,
Manufacturers of
Miffs
Of Every Description
and Jobbers of
Painters*
Materials.
ST. PAUL, • • MINN.
